Am Donnerstag, 09. Juni 2005 um 23:03:33 Uhr (-0700) schrieb lotu5: > Updating the GPL is therefore a very different task in 2005 than it > was in 1991. The substantive reasons for revision, and the likely > nature of those changes, are subject matter for another essay. At > present we would like to concentrate on the institutional, procedural > aspects of changing the license. Those are complicated by the fact > that the GPL serves four distinct purposes.
What is very likely to change is the policy for web services, a blind spot of the GPL 2.0 since a long time. Today, the GPL only requires that code which statically or dynamically links to GPLed code - for example, an application linking to a GPLed library - is released likewise under the GPL. However, if a GPLed program is exposed to the world not by classical linking, but through remote procedure calls, nothing is required. This, in fact, is the loophole on which many proprietary web services build on GPL software, Google and Amazon probably being among them. If the GPL version 3 will change that, expect interesting times in the Internet. -F -- http://cramer.netzliteratur.net # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
